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The Rhetorical Analysis Of Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism

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President Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, was known for his love of nature. This was conveyed most strongly in his speeches, such as “Conservation as a National Duty”, in which he advocated for the preservation of natural resources in the interests of the nation and its people. In this speech as well as others he gave during his term as President, he stressed that conservation did not just pertain to preserving natural resources or deferring their exhaustion; rather, it was closely intertwined with the patriotic duty of ensuring that the nation would be able to provide for future generations, and was second only to the “great fundamental questions of morality”. One such example of how Roosevelt connected conservation with morality is found in his “The New Nationalism” speech, given in Osawatomie, Kansas in 1910. Here, he compares the way he believes the nation must behave in terms of conservation to the manner in which a farmer acts in reference to his children and the land that provides for them. To quote, Roosevelt stated that “The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.” My interpretation of this quote and how it pertains to morality is that Roosevelt is trying to say that we should use the land to support ourselves but not to the point where it is no longer able to
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